There’s some sort of allegory for Washington politics here…
Excitingly, the rodents are gnawing upon the bodies of the dead in the hospital morgue:
“They were going into places like the anal area, the vaginal area, the pubic area of the males,” Doris Kennard said. “That’s where they would get in.”
In short: a coronal mass ejection shot out of the sun and came near-ish to the Earth. It was at least as powerful as the CME that hit the Earth in 1859, the so-called “Carrington Event” (named after the astronomer who linked a solar flare and the geomagnetic storm that followed). This event had some interesting effects:
1) Aurora visible as far south as Cuba and Hawaii
2) In the northeast, aurora so bright you could read by them at night
3) Telegraph offices burst into flames due to the induced currents
4) Telegraph systems that functioned *without* being powered up due to the induced currents.
Had the July 2012 CME hit the Earth, we could have expected some or all of the following:
1) A whole lot of fried satellites: say goodby to satellite TV, intercontinental communications, weather satellites, GPS
2) Phone land-lines would have been charged up, perhaps setting your phones/modems on fire (and perhaps the rest of your house)
3) Power lines would have been charged up, blowing up a *lot* of transformers and shutting down large power grids
It would have been basically a giant EMP attack. Things like your laptop, your cell phone, your car even a house with its own diesel/PV/wind generators would have been fine, since the length of the conductors involved are likely far too short to build up enough current to cause trouble. But for conductors *miles* long, like phone and power lines, you could expect to see massive damage. Lights out, basically. And getting the lights back on would be a hell of a challenge.
Chances of another such solar superstorm hitting the Earth in the next decade; 12%.
… as rendered via Hollywood movie screams.
Heh.
[youtube Gz_UR61wQes]
Less than a day left on these ebay auctions. Given the dearth of bids and watchers, it looks like not only will you be able to get them cheap, this’ll be your *only* chance to get them.
—————
A while back I took a stab at printing cyanotype blueprints on canvas (the kind used by artists for painting on). After a rough start, I managed to get the process to work pretty well. It’s more complex and substantially more expensive than cyanotype printing on vellum paper, so I don’t know if I’ll make canvas blueprints available for regular sale like the paper versions. Still, I’ve put the first three successes on ebay if anyone is interested:
An interesting philosophical conundrum is discussed:
Religion-in-general and aliens is an interesting debate, but Christianity would be in the unique, and difficult, position of having to explain the role of Christ. If then aliens turn out to be pure and sin-free, that would eliminate their need for salvation through Christ… but it’d make humanity look kinda bad. But if they were sinful little buggers, then they’d either need Christs salvation, or they’d have already had it. If the latter, that indicates that Christ keeps having to pop up across the universe and play out the same tale over and over (and it means that humanity and Christs story here on Earth are not unique). If the former, then that means Jesus never wandered on by their world.
A few responses to this hypothetical situation – humanity encountering intelligent aliens and how that plays in to Christianity – that I’ve seen over the years:
1) Aliens aren’t described in the Bible; therefore they don’t exist; thus, shut up.
2) If we *did* actually meet aliens, they’re actually demons trying to trick us (I *really* hope these people aren’t the ones to make first contact).
3) If we meet un-saved aliens, it’ll be our job to minister to them and convert them.
4) If we meet un-saved aliens, we should avoid trying to convert them… God would have a separate plan for them.
5) Shrug… I dunno… we’ll deal with it when it happens.
From a theological perspective, I’d say that #5 is probably the best answer. “Intelligent extraterrestrial” covers such a vast range of possibilities that it’s logically impossible to come up with even the tiniest fraction of possible contingency plans. For all we know, the first aliens we meet will have actually had Christ show up, but rather than crucifying him they made him their king, but it was a disaster, they overthrew him and formed a religion in direct opposition to Christian teachings. Which means that when they get here, there’s gonna be a ruckus. Or the aliens will be simply incapable of processing the idea of believing in entities that exist solely through belief/faith, and thus they think our species is dangerously insane. Or they are religious fanatics of a caliber to make our most zealous nuts look like San Francisco coffee-shop atheists. Or on the 0 to 10 scale on the x-axis of religiosity, they are well off on the i-axis.
One thing that’s safe to assume: regardless of what the aliens beliefs are, if they get *here* before we get *there,* there’ll be a whole lot of people who try to adopt the aliens religion as they own… or at least, what they *assume* to be the aliens religion. Search your feelings: you know it will be true. California will be the center of the alien cargo cult religions as the addictively trendy try to adopt Martianism or Klingon Space Jesusism or Mormonism or whatever wacky incomprehensible religion the aliens bring.
I just hope they don’t land in the Middle East. No good could come of that.
You know, there just might be a reason why some westerners are leery of any acceptance of sharia law by western courts…
An edict was *apparently* released stating that all women between the ages of 11 and 46 in the city of Mosul must undergo the procedure. There is some question as to whether the edict was legitimately put out by ISIS, or whether it’s a hoax designed to make ISIS look bad. But like Poes Law, it’s one of those things where even if it’s a hoax, the reality is so bad that the hoax is entirely believable. The Pope declares mandatory FGM? Nobody’d believe it. Obama orders it? Nobody’d believe it. Glenn Beck called for it? Nope. Putin? Castro? Hobby Lobby? How about an Islamic cleric with newfound political power? Weeeeellllll….
Every city has its problems. Every travel guide worth a damn should tell you about not only the general sort of problems a city might have (“avoid XYZ area after dark, due to muggers”) and more specific ones (“avoid ZYX area at all times, due to radioactive hippies”). So it’s not surprising that this online guidebook to Moscow, Russia, has some warnings about people to avoid. The weird thing? Who some of those people are:
Russian Nazis. Let that sink in.
(O_°)
I’ve got the first of the Patreon-supported “PDF Reviews” up over at the APR Blog.
A ginormous glider designed and patented by Burt Rutan carrying a space launch rocket on its back, towed by a jetliner and performing some interesting maneuvers to assure positive separation.
Found on ebay a while back, an artists concept (almost certainly an AP artist, using imagination more than primary documentation) showing an odd little submarine carrying four Polaris missiles while would launch through the sail. Such concepts *were* studied early on in the process, but I think this one is pure artistic license.
Couple this with the ebola outbreak, and… party time!